No More Incandescents

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Sureshks
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No More Incandescents

Post by Sureshks »

It looks like the sale of pear-shaped incandescent light bulbs will be phased out in 2023... in favor of LED lights.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/clim ... fb-nytimes

Suresh
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Deane Clark
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Re: No More Incandescents

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Sureshks wrote: Tue Apr 26, 2022 8:10 pm It looks like the sale of pear-shaped incandescent light bulbs will be phased out in 2023... in favor of LED lights.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/26/clim ... fb-nytimes

Suresh
Beware the paywall :-/
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Sureshks
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Re: No More Incandescents

Post by Sureshks »

Here it is pasted in its entirety...

New Rules Will End the Century-Long Run of Classic Light Bulbs

The administration set efficiency standards that will phase out sales of incandescent bulbs in favor of LEDs, reducing Americans’ electrical bills over time.

The Department of Energy said that, once the rules are in place next year, Americans will save $3 billion on utility bills.

Hiroko Tabuchi
By Hiroko Tabuchi
April 26, 2022
Updated 3:34 p.m. ET

After lighting the nation’s homes and businesses for more than a century, transforming the design of buildings and even lengthening the average workday, incandescent light bulbs are finally on their way out.

The Biden administration on Tuesday adopted two new rules that set stricter energy efficiency standards for light bulbs. Those standards would effectively phase out the sale of most new incandescent bulbs — the pear-shaped orbs with glowing wire centers — in 2023.

Much of the country is already lit by LED lights, which the Department of Energy estimates last as much as 50 times as long as incandescent bulbs and use a fraction of the electricity. That revolutionary shift has already driven down electricity demand in American homes, saving consumers money and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“The lighting industry is already embracing more energy efficient products, and this measure will accelerate progress,” Jennifer M. Granholm, the energy secretary, said in a statement.

Once the new rules are in place, Americans will collectively save $3 billion a year on their utility bills, the department said, at a time when higher energy costs have been squeezing household finances. The stricter standards will also cut emissions of planet-warming carbon dioxide by an estimated 222 million metric tons over the next 30 years, an amount equivalent to the emissions generated by 28 million homes in one year, the department added.

The Biden Administration’s Environmental Agenda
President Biden is pushing stronger regulations, but faces a narrow path to achieving his goals in the fight against global warming.

Biden’s Agenda: President Biden’s plan to fight global warming faces legal, legislative and political challenges that could dismantle it entirely.

A Landmark Law: The administration plans to resurrect parts of the National Environmental Policy Act requiring federal agencies to consider the climate impacts of proposed projects like highways and pipelines.

Oil and Gas Drilling: The Biden administration will resume selling leases on public lands in an effort to increase the domestic oil supply.

Light Bulbs: Two rules setting stricter efficiency standards will effectively phase out sales of incandescent bulbs, in an effort to save consumers money and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The phaseout had been on track to begin earlier, in 2019. But the Trump administration, bowing to pressure from some of the world’s biggest incandescent light-bulb makers, stalled the effort. By contrast, in the European Union, those same companies have adhered to a phaseout of incandescent bulbs.

President Biden is now working to restore many of the environmental rules rolled back by his predecessor, as part of the administration’s push for bolder action to limit climate change. These regulatory changes could end up carrying much of the weight of the Biden climate agenda since much of that effort is now stalled in Congress.

Light bulb manufacturers have argued that too rapid a pivot away from incandescent bulbs would damage their bottom line and lead to a glut of stranded inventory — in other words, bulbs already manufactured that could no longer be sold — which would eventually end up in landfills, unused.

For manufacturers, profit margins for incandescent lighting are significantly higher than for LEDs, partly because investment in manufacturing equipment for incandescents has long been paid off and there is relatively little competition among manufacturers of the old style bulbs. The LED market, on the other hand, has attracted new manufacturers and has become far more competitive.

Environmental and energy-efficiency groups lauded the new rules, but said that the regulatory timeline gave manufacturers too much time to move away from a technology for which a replacement was already widely available.

“LEDs have become so inexpensive that there’s no good reason for manufacturers to keep selling 19th-century technology that just isn’t very good at turning electrical energy into light,” said Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

The National Electrical Manufacturers Association, the trade group for manufacturers of light bulbs, said the shift to LED lighting already underway had been “an unqualified success.” The group “appreciates the administration’s recognition of the challenges industry faces in complying with the rule and the adoption of a more manageable compliance time frame,” said Spencer Pederson, its vice president of public affairs.

Choosing your light bulbs:One thing we can do is switch light bulbs. Read reviews of a number of brands from Wirecutter.
Research has shown that lower-end retailers like dollar stores or convenience shops that serve low-income communities stock their shelves with traditional or halogen incandescent bulbs, whereas stores serving more affluent communities have shifted to exclusively selling the far-more-efficient LEDs. One Michigan study, for instance, found that not only were LED bulbs less available in poorer areas, they also tended to cost on average $2.50 more per bulb than in wealthier communities.

“Many of the energy-guzzling bulbs have labels claiming they save energy, and it’s infuriating,” said Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project. “Responsible chains ought to get them off their shelves as soon as possible and certainly by the end of this year.”
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Deane Clark
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Re: No More Incandescents

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Unfortunately, I doubt this will help darken the night skies at all.
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Sureshks
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Re: No More Incandescents

Post by Sureshks »

That would be the purpose of my post. Incandescent lights can be filtered out to some degree. There's nothing we can about LEDs, except to hope that cities and homes put proper caps on outdoor lights to point the extremely bright light downwards instead of up into the sky.

Suresh
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Re: No More Incandescents

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Sureshks wrote: Wed Apr 27, 2022 12:26 am That would be the purpose of my post. Incandescent lights can be filtered out to some degree. There's nothing we can about LEDs, except to hope that cities and homes put proper caps on outdoor lights to point the extremely bright light downwards instead of up into the sky.

Suresh
Actually, incandescent can’t be filtered very well, since they emit a blackbody radiation curve. But it’s a moot point because old fashioned incandescent bulbs haven’t been used much in outdoor lighting for things like like streets and parking lots since mercury vapor lights took over decades ago. The article is not about mercury and sodium vapor lights.
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Re: No More Incandescents

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I found this nice diagram online.
E7107857-566E-48C9-A74E-3D47ADC412C6.jpeg
E7107857-566E-48C9-A74E-3D47ADC412C6.jpeg (71.24 KiB) Viewed 2168 times
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SEmert
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Re: No More Incandescents

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Now if we can only get them to outlaw outdoor use of any LED lights above 3000K color temperature!

By the way, some time back the YouTube channel Technology Connections made a couple of great videos on outdoor nighttime lighting:

The High Pressure Sodium Light: Ubiquitous, effective, but good?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1dMlVwUsrA

and
The LED's Challenge to High Pressure Sodium
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIC-iGDTU40

On a different tangent.. I wonder how well a LED light will work in my oven? :shock: :lol:
Last edited by SEmert on Thu Apr 28, 2022 12:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: No More Incandescents

Post by SEmert »

Another tangent...

I've seen some studies that say people install way more LED lighting than they need because "they're so efficient and so cheap to operate", hugely negating the energy savings of LED lighting.
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Deane Clark
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Re: No More Incandescents

Post by Deane Clark »

Yeah, I’m afraid that the industry is pushing the idea that brighter is always better :-/
Like with flashlights - instead of being bright and allowing batteries to last 10 times as long, they make them 10x brighter, so you go through batteries just as fast.

That being said, Ive learned to love the bright LED shop lights I put in my basement :)
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Dick Jacobson
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Re: No More Incandescents

Post by Dick Jacobson »

We often use incandescents as heaters, not for their light. LEDs make poor heaters. I hope these convenient and cheap heat sources are not completely eliminated.
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Re: No More Incandescents

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There is the appliance application. I’m hoping appliance bulbs will still be available. I don’t know of a “modern” replacement. Well, for ovens at least. An LED might work fine in a refrigerator.
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petemn2004
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Re: No More Incandescents

Post by petemn2004 »

Government likes higher color temperature LEDs because they are more efficient (cheaper to run per lumen) for outdoor lighting than cooler temp LEDs. Bluer (higher color temp LEDs) have a harsher appearance.

LED lights when used properly are fine. Just wish all the automakers could do it right so that oncoming drivers do not get overwhelmed by very bright headlights.

From the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA):
"Color Matters

As the illustration above, it is crucial to have fully shielded lighting, but we now know that the color of light is also very important. Both LED and metal halide fixtures contain large amounts of blue light in their spectrum. Because blue light brightens the night sky more than any other color of light, it’s important to minimize the amount emitted. Exposure to blue light at night has also been shown to harm human health and endanger wildlife. IDA recommends using lighting that has a color temperature of no more than 3000 Kelvins.

Lighting with lower color temperatures has less blue in its spectrum and is referred to as being “warm.” Higher color temperature sources of light are rich in blue light. IDA recommends that only warm light sources be used for outdoor lighting. This includes LPS, HPS and low-color-temperature LEDs. In some areas, the white light of even a low-color-temperature LED can be a threat to the local nighttime environment. In those cases, LPS or narrow-spectrum LEDs are preferred choices."

Mark
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